You’re watching a television show and it ends with a dark scene of a hand firing a gun at the hero. You don’t know if the hero lives or dies.
You don’t know who shot the hero or why.
And you’re in suspense.
So what do you do?
You watch the next episode, of course.
Humans have a desire to KNOW stuff.
When they don’t know, it bugs them. It’s like an itch that needs to be scratched, and they’ll do whatever it takes to scratch that itch.
You can do the same thing with your emails – make it so your readers MUST read not only the email you just sent them, but also your next one and the one after that.
Andres Chaperone does a great job of teaching this email marketing technique.
In fact, here are three different open loop methods he recommends:
The Fake Out Open
You start out telling your readers that you’re going to tell them something. But then you tell them something else, instead. For example:
“Dear Reader,
I’m going to show you exactly how I managed to lose 83 pounds while watching television, eating whatever I wanted and never exercising – other than to go to the fridge.
The secret to my weight loss involved three magic words, and I’ll tell you what those words are and why they work to make you effortlessly lose weight tomorrow.
But right now, I want to tell you about my 21 year old college roommate who died from a heart attack because of a single Oreo cookie.”
You’re telling them what you’re going to tell them, but you’re not telling them right now.
That’s because you have something else to tell them now.
This is an open loop – the magic 3 words that caused the 83 pound weight loss – combined with value stacking. They get a secret tomorrow, and they get a story about the dead roommate and the Oreo cookie today.
This makes the recipient feel like there’s a ton of great stuff coming from you.
This creates surprise, curiosity, desire and anticipation.
And they love you and your emails for it.
Delayed Gratification
For this one, you’re going to throw in an open loop somewhere inside your content. It could be almost anywhere – near the beginning, in the middle, near the end… where you place it will depend on what it is and how it relates to the rest of your email.
For example, let’s say you’re writing an email about weight loss, and you’re telling the story of how one of your weight loss students lost 143 pounds thanks to your coaching. In the middle of your email, you might write…
“And when I told her how to perform the belly blaster technique in the shower every morning, and that she would effortlessly lose another pound of ugly fat every week… well, she just about lost it.
***If you’re not familiar with my belly blaster shower technique for losing fat, tomorrow I’ll tell you exactly how to do it. You’ll be shocked at the results.
So she tried the technique anyway, even though she thought I was crazy, and a week later she called with the results.
‘I lost 2 inches off my stomach, and I didn’t do anything else differently!’”
Notice how we mention something that’s bound to provoke curiosity, and then we tell the reader they will find out all about it… tomorrow.
3. Cliff Hanger P.S.
This is perhaps one of the most commonly used techniques for creating an open loop. It’s easy to do and keeps you on the minds of your readers long after they close your email.
You simply tack on a P.S. with a teaser for whatever you’re going to share with them tomorrow, like this:
“PS: Did you ever hear about the guy who decided to tie balloons to a lawn chair, to see if he could fly?
He did, with unexpected and totally scary results. In fact, he even scared the heck out of an airline pilot at 30,000 feet!
And what happened next, you’re not going to believe. In fact, I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, I promise.
See you then!”
It’s easy to create open loops in your emails.
And don’t stop there. You can place open loops everywhere. For example, at the end of a blogpost, in your videos and so forth.
It’s a great way to get people to read several posts instead of just one, or to watch several videos.
You just keep ‘open looping’ them, and they keep clicking to satisfy their curiosity.
It works almost like magic.
